Timeline format
Timeline pages This is a general description of the way the timeline is organized and what you need to do to create timeline pages. The timeline is a three-level hierarchy that is linked from the front page under the “Day by day timeline” link. Top Page The top level page is named “TimelineX”. (The X is from when I (that is, Xalt) was creating it. It’s an artifact of design by flailing around. It has no deep significance.) The top page has three section: Main Index, Special Cases and Notes. Main Index Section The main index has a condensed year format for the two main continuity sections: 2005, 2006 and 2007, and also 2015 and 2016. This makes it easy to go to the month you’re looking for. Special Cases Section The Special Cases section is a month-by-month list of months that have at least one day page, together with a link to the story or stories that have day pages in that month. Promoting a full year from the Special Cases to the Main Index should only be done when there are a significant number of months involved. “Significant” is a matter of judgement, but since the Wanted Pages list (Special:wantedpages) is over 800 entries at the time of this update, we prefer that we don’t add a lot of red-links. Notes Section This provides a handy table of where to find a calendar (see Month pages) that starts on the desired day of the week. Month pages A month page contains three sections: an unlabeled section, an experimental section called “Stories this Month” and a “See Also” section. List Format The unlabeled section has two possible formats: a list format and a calendar format. The list format is the older of the two, and it’s preferred when there are a relatively small number of links to day pages. (Many of the month pages in the Special Cases section contain only one link to a date page.) Promoting a list format page to a calendar format page should only be done when the promotion would result in adding relatively few new red-links to the wanted pages list. At the moment, my criterion is 5 or fewer. Calendar format The calendar format is what it looks like: a calendar. The calendar is a simple table. There is a list on the bottom of the main timeline page that gives a source for a calendar that starts on each day of the week. That can simply be copied into your editor of choice, and you’re one global search-and-replace plus 4 specific edits away from having a new month page. When you do, make sure that you get the number of days at the end of the month correct. Stories this Month section The Stories This Month section is experimental. It’s just what it looks like: a list of the stories that have date pages this month. Since it’s a recent experiment, most month pages don’t have it or it’s woefully incomplete. I've abandoned trying to maintain this, so it's a failed experiment. See Also section This section has two possible formats: the standard format, and an experimental format. The standard format is simply a link to the preceding and following month. Months in the Special Cases section usually have these links disabled to avoid creating more red-links on the Wanted Pages list. The experimental format extends this to a table of links that pull stories or major threads together so they can be followed easily. The table has four columns: previous, a link code, next, and a link to the appropriate story or stories. The first row after the header is the standard link to the previous and next month page. A chain of links can cover more than one story if that provides continuity. For example, at the present time Glyph has three stories and is also a significant character in one or two others. These should be linked together, using the Link Code to identify the continuity stream. For another example: “The Island of Dr, DNA” and “The Back Side of Paradise” have overlapping continuity. They’re linked together in one continuity thread. Day Pages Day pages start with a bit of boilerplate and then have three or four sections: Events, optionally Other Stories, See Also and References. NOTE - some of the older day pages are not in the standard format. If you change one of them, please fix the format when you make your other changes. Note the Sample Date Page. The sample only works on pages that have a standard name (see below). This is because they use some markup magic to derive the dates on the page from the page name (thanks, Malady); this markup magic doesn't work if the page name isn't a date. Because of this, the sample shows errors. Don't worry about it, it works fine if the name is a date. Events section The events section is the most complicated section, since it pulls together everything that happened on that day from multiple stories. The events section has sub-sections by location. This is helpful when the events occur in different places and have no relationship to each other. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work, since some continuities involve characters moving from one location to another. When this happens, I (Xalt) give it its own header and mark the location changes with an arrow: “- - > somewhere.” As expected, the Whateley Academy location is the most challenging in merging the stream of events from different stories. Sometimes it’s helpful to insert subheaders for different times of day to organize things. Older stories tend not to give time-of-day clues; newer stories give decent clues. Certain types of information, such as US holidays and the academic calendar, go in the Events section before the first location header. Other Stories section This section is for stories that cover the day in question, but don't actually have anything happening on that specific day. The reason for this is to give the reader a clue about other stories that may be relevant to cis interests. See Also section The See Also section is the same as the one on the month pages, except that the links are to date pages rather than month pages. References The references section needs to be the last section. Some of the diagnostic tools Sir Lee uses complain if it isn't. Notes Link Format All page names in the timeline have one of two formats: YYYY-MM for month pages, and YYYY-MM-DD for date pages. There are some special cases where date pages end with a literal XX instead of a real day: this is for scenes that can’t be localized any closer than a month. There are also cases where there’s a season page: 1983-SU for Summer of 1983. Filler pages In the unceasing effort to reduce the Wanted Pages to something reasonable, we plug gaps of a few days with filler pages. These pages are in the standard format for day or list format month pages; they just say something like "this is a filler page." "A few days" is a matter of judgement. My current criterion is about 4. Filler pages are not linked from list format month pages. They automatically link to calendar format month pages, of course. Category:Policy